My First Fair!

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For a couple years now I have thought of entering a cake in the fair.  In California, it didn’t seem to be real popular, for the size of the fair in LA there were never very many cakes.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect in my new home town.  There was a fairly good turn out and some very beautiful cakes.  Around 20 cakes were submited in four divisions, youth, amatuer, advanced, and professional. 

 I entered the advanced catagory, but there weren’t any guidelines and none of the cakes were labeled with the catagories.   My cake was “named” Something Blue,  we had to name our cakes and featured cornflower blue fondant and royal icing flowers and vines, with ribbon on the base and gumpaste flowers on top. 

The judging was a little hard to follow, everyone got a blue ribbon to start with, high blue ribbons were awarded next, then two sweepstakes, four best in show and lastly a special award of Judges Choice, there were two judges, hence two awards.  I recieved a high blue ribbon and a sweepstakes award, pretty satistifing for my first try.  The cake that won best in show in my division was very well done and deserved to win, I didn’t mind coming in second to a beautiful design like that.

What do you think of our local talent?

 

Vanilla or Chocolate….OR Banana?

Most cakes I make for other people are either chocolate or vanilla, delicious but not unexpected.  This Banana cake however is.  Not everybody loves bananas (as my sister in law Paige will attest to)  but I think most people would be begging for seconds!  Try it, you’ll like it!

 

Banana Spice Cake

 1 yellow or vanilla cake mix with pudding (I like Betty Crocker)

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon (the saigon cinnamon at Costco is really great considering you can buy a 5 year supply for $2.99)

2 bananas all smushed up, the riper the better!

1 cup water

1/2 cup oil, I use canola

3 large or extra large eggs (when baking at a higher altitude the bigger the egg the better)

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat to 350.  Grease 2 9-inch round pans.  Mix all ingriedents together for 1 minute on low, Scrape sides, and mix for two more minutes on medium.  Divide the batter between the two pans and bake for 30-32 minutes. 

I frosted this cake with homemade cream cheese frosting,  gave it a nice tang and kept it from being to sweet.

Let me know what you think of this cake, those who try it.   And tell me this -  what is your favorite cake?

 

Two Year Old Tractor

This Tractor cake was for a two year old boy’s birthday, I would have liked to see his face when he saw his green tractor (it had to be green).  It was all chocolate- cake and filling with vanilla butter cream and then covered in fondant.